What remains striking about the LA Times Op-Ed that I linked and critiqued earlier today is that the paper’s editors chose to publish it.

Now, to be sure, its author is representative of a certain type of liberal, she is not representative of American liberals in general. Indeed, many of us on the right have left-leaning friends who hold political views similar to the columnist, yet don’t shun people merely because of their politics.  As our reader sonicfrog relates in the comments:

My partner in the duo band Taylor Martin is a Socialist… No, not the socialist lite that many consider Obama to be, but a real card carrying Socialist / Communist. And he’s not quiet about it either. He’s a political hot-head and talks about how evil capitalism is all the time. Yet, we get along just fine.

I would dare say that he’s not the only GayPatriot reader (nor indeed the only right-of-center American) to have such friends.  By the same token, many (if not most) liberals have conservative friends with whom they continue to associate (and whose company the often enjoy) despite their political differences.

With that in mind, I ask agin, “What were the Times editors thinking when they accepted this piece of publication?”  Did they want to discourage liberal readers from befriending conservatives? Did they think she could serve as a role model? Or did they just want to make excuses for their own ideological isolation, explaining away their paucity of conservative friends and associates?

In reading this woman’s piece, we can see that, boy, she does have her issues, projecting her prejudices onto conservatives, contending we lack empathy– even as she provides evidence that they are.  And saying we’re not kind.

She assumes that should her conservative neighbor fall on hard times, he might well question his feeling “that the government shouldn’t be helping anybody out” as if he had never factored bad things happening to people into his political calculus.  Many of us righties do.  And that’s why most of us donate generously to charities.  (Is she aware of surveys showing conservatives to be more generous than liberals?)

One wonders why this woman refused to take the time and attempt to empathize with her conservative neighbor.  It does seem a kind person would at least consider his neighbor’s opinions.

Glenn linked this yesterday; it does show the former Speaker, rhetorically at least, at the top of his game. He makes his point clearly, but does it hold water?

Sometimes you read a column by a liberal that seems it was written by a conservative to caricature his ideological adversaries. And when you realize it’s probably legitimate, you wonder at the editors who approve this piece for publication.  Are they so contained within their liberal bubble that they’re blind to how narrow their ideological confrère might comes across to someone with a broader perspective?

Such were my thoughts when I chanced upon this Op-Ed in a paper I used to receive every morning on my doorstep.  The author writes about a political argument that changed her feelings for neighbors she describes as “the best neighbors in the world. Always ready with a tool, an ingredient or a jump-start for the car. Whatever you need, if they have it, they will give it. They are a lovely family: husband, wife and four smart, funny, polite children. I was sure they were Democrats.”

Already there, we see her prejudice, assuming that nice people must be Democrats.

When while playing poker and drinking with the author and her spouse, the aforementioned husband, a white man married to a black woman announced that that tea party was not racist, indeed, that he was part of that dynamic grassroots movement. The argument became heated.  Insults exchanged.

The following morning, the tea party conservative came over with his wife to apologize.  His contrition, however, could not soften the hardened heart of his erstwhile hostess:

But my feelings about them are changed. I cannot respect them as I did before. And as they headed back across the street, I saw the look they gave each other: They don’t like us anymore either.

How does she know what that look meant?  Well, we do know what she feels.  She spells it out pretty clearly

I don’t want to be friends with someone who is a member of the tea party or is a Newt Gingrich Republican. We are not the same. I equate their political views with thoughtlessness, intolerance and narcissism. (more…)

Rick Santorum may choose to focus more on a social issues at a time of fiscal peril for this nation. Others seem determined not to criticize him for his stands, but instead to engage in petty antics which say more about them than about the flawed candidate. As our reader, ChrisH pointed out in a comment to my post on the Senator’s discipline problem:

Saw a couple people post a portrait of Rick Santorum on Facebook made up of gay pornography. One person called it “brilliant.”

More like childish and immature.

I had seen similar images in my Facebook thread with similar commentary.  Santorum has many problems and, like all presidential candidates, should be subject to a thorough vetting by his opponents, pundits and other journalists.  But, there’s no need to resort to such pettiness to get a point across.

They would do well to follow the lead of John Podhoretz who wonders at the hysteria, but at the same time points out just how un-Reaganesque the contender is:

Moreover, the hysterical and wildly distorted mass onslaught against Santorum over the past few days — which must be understood as an example of the nearly overt way the mainstream media have declared war on the Republican Party in the run-up to the election — is certain to provoke a backlash among voters who’ll know they’re being fed Democratic campaign propaganda.

No, Santorum’s problem is — forgive the technical graduate-school political-science terminology here — that he’s a sourpuss, and sourpusses don’t get elected president. (more…)

For some reason, this story hasn’t garnered the coverage of a previous vice president orthographical error:

Copy editors and fact-checkers are in short supply these days, as newspapers and websites daily attest. Apparently, that’s true of Joe Biden’s office, too. The vice president’s staff recently circulated a press release that promotes Biden’s trip to “Road Island.”

“On Thursday, the Vice President will travel to Boston, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire and Providence, Road Island to attend campaign events,” the memo states.